The Whopper survives DOT project near Clyde

Haywood County residents won’t be down a Burger King when the state Department of Transportation starts its major reconstruction of the Lowe’s interchange.

The fast food giant will simply move about 200 yards up Paragon Parkway, into the parking lot where the Tractor Supply, Blue Rooster and Haywood County Department of Social Services are located. The total cost of the project is $700,000, and the new 2,763-square-foot Burger King is expected to open by the middle of next year.

The specific plot of land is owned by RCG Ventures, an Atlanta-based real estate investment firm, not by the county, as some believed.

“It is not a county building. The county has nothing to do with it,” said Commissioner Kevin Ensley at a recent Haywood County Board of Commissioners meeting.

County leaders were happy that Burger King decided to relocate rather than simply shut its doors.

“Thank God, it is saving jobs,” Ensley said.

The Smoky Mountain News could not find out how many people work at that particularly Burger King because local employees are not allowed to talk to media outlets. Carrols Corporations, Burger King’s parent company, did not respond to inquiries by press time.

However, the loss would not have left people without a Burger King. There are two other Burger Kings in the county — one in Canton and another in Waynesville.

The Clyde Burger King was forced to move from its current location, attached to the Shell gas station on Paragon Parkway off Exit 104 on U.S. 73/19. It, along with nine other businesses and five homes, stands in the way of a $24 million N.C. DOT road construction project.

The department has slowly purchased the properties that the homes and businesses sit on so it can reconfigure the interchange. The project includes building a new highway on-ramp heading toward Waynesville, realigning Paragon Parkway with the new on-ramp, moving Access Road and widening part of Crabtree Road.

The changes aim to remedy traffic flow problems in the area, which for years has been deemed by locals as “malfunction junction.”